Flying The Flag
What is your background in motion capture?
I first began working in the motion capture industry at Electronic Arts Canada in 1995. I was a supervisor of special projects at Sony Pictures [from 2002—2009], which meant that I had a wide variety of duties, from on-set motion capture supervision, tracking supervision, pipeline implementation and next-generation technology development. During my time there I helped develop the process of performance capture. The video games industry has been using mo-cap for years.
Why do you think film has been slower to adopt the technology?
Video games are inherently computer-generated, while films have historically been predominately live action. That has been the norm for many years, but I think the use of mo-cap in film has been on the rise simply because there is more CG in films these days. When you have one or two shots in a movie you can have an animator do it all, but when you have a cast of thousands who are CG, you probably want to use motion capture.
How has mo-cap changed during your time in the industry, and what role do you see it playing in the future?
In the early days of motion capture, I seemed to be the only person who saw it as an integral part of the film industry. Now it’s a household name, and widely accepted. I see film and motion capture as one and the same; one is the digital version of the other. People still don’t look at it like that, but I know this to be true.
When I was first starting out, I happened to see a documentary about Thomas Edison and his invention of the film industry. They listed a bunch of things about the early film industry, and I realised that the list of things described the current state of motion capture. I realised that film and motion capture were the same thing; it was just that motion capture was so crude, that people didn’t recognise the two things were the same. Mo-cap is just film in 3D, and one day the two things will be indistinguishable from one another.
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